Politico reports that Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education is looking to hire an outside consultant to help determine why employee satisfaction has fallen significantly as compared with where it stood at the end of the Obama administration. Back then, about 60 percent of employees in the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education said they were satisfied with their organization, job, and salary, and saw their operation as a good place to work. Now, only 43 percent say they’re satisfied.

This drop comes, according to an online posting by the Department, “after years of steady improvement,” and officials there “would like to examine the root cause of this drop in satisfaction, and see how it can be reversed in future years.”

So the Department is seeking bids from contractors to answer this question.

Yeah, they should save their money, or, rather, our money.

One education policy expert tweeted this clear-eyed response to the DeVos Department’s search for the morale killer:

It’s possible, Watson, that the clues are right in front of our eyes.

A whole lot of the people who work in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education are there because of their commitment to effective public schools. In contrast, DeVos, who came to office with no experience with public schools — as a student, parent, teacher, or administrator — has shown hostility to public schools and repeatedly demonstrated her lack of understanding of education policy issues.

DeVos, whose family wealth makes her a billionaire, has held major financial stakes in for-profit education. While seeking to revive the fortunes of predatory for-profit colleges, DeVos has snidely denigrated students and allowed her Department, which she has staffed at senior levels with former for-profit college executives, to impugn students’ integrity.

While DeVos spends much of her time at her luxury homes in Florida and Michigan, the Department is moving to sharply curtail teleworking by career employees. The Secretary has taken a hard-line approach to the employees’ union, issuing a unilateral collective bargaining agreement that stripped workers of numerous benefits and protections — a move the Federal Labor Relations Authority said appeared to be unlawful.

In addition, under DeVos, the Department, like the entire Trump administration, is trashing civil rights protections, especially for LGBTQ people. The DeVos Department has also sharply weakened protections for victims of campus sexual assault.

Why is morale low at the DeVos Department? Come on.